What's your Brewtine (Brewing Routine)?

[Brulosopher]

With homebrewing growing in popularity and, hence, more and more folks looking for "how to brew" threads, I thought it might be cool to start where we could all post a brief step-by-step of our own typical brew day. I'll start!
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Process: I brew 5.5 or 11 gallon batches, always all-grain, on a single-tier system with a 15 gallon brew kettle, 70 quart Coleman rectangular cooler mash-tun, and a 9 gallon (soon to be 15 gallon) hot liquor tank; I have a single pump and I tend to batch sparge (2 runnings), though I occasionally do a modified fly-sparge. I also keep bulk grains and hops on hand, so some of my steps will be unnecessary for those who purchase their grains pre-milled from the LHBS. Finally, I use BeerSmith for all recipe designs and calculations.

1. 2-3 days prior to brewing, I make up an adequate yeast starter.
2. On brew day, I wake up around 6am (usually Sat, Sun, or Mon... I work 4 x 10s) and start the coffee maker (Folgers regular roast, word).
3. Fill hot liquor tank with strike water (strike + sparge, if it will fit) and start heating.
4. While the water is heating, I measure out and mill my grains, then I measure the temp of the milled grains to enter into BeerSmith (for water temp calculation).
5. Once strike water is to temp (usually around 165F or so, depending on the season), I pour the mash volume into my mash tun, close the lid, and let it pre-heat for about 5 minutes; if the water still isn't to strike temp after 5 mintues, I stir it around a bit until it is.
6. Once strike water is to temp, I dough-in and stir, breaking up all dough balls until it reaches the proper mash temp (I prefer 152-154 for most beers)- this usually takes 1 to 3 minutes.
7. During the mash (there's a thread about this), I fill my fermenter with Iodophor solution and put my airlock in there, clean up my grain mill area, retrieve sparge water (if not already in HLT), prep hop additions, play with the kids, eat breakfast... whatever.
8. Every 20 or so minutes, I stir my mash. I know this is a controversial practice, but in my experience (I brew at least 2 times per month, often every weekend) I've only lost 1-2 degrees F after an hour mash while picking up 5 or so points efficiency, even in the cool winters. To me, it's worth it. It should be noted I stir for about 10 seconds or less.
9. Once mash is done, I vorlauf about a gallon via gravity, connect a my MLT hose to the pump connected to my brew kettle, then turn the pump on, keeping the valve on the "out" end of the pump as close to closed as I can get it.
9a. If batch sparging, I'll collect as much of the first runnings, close valve, pour sparge water into MLT, stir, let sit for 5-10 minutes, vorlauf, then collect second runnings.
9b. If doing my modified fly-sparge, I'll pour sparge water over my grain bed to keep about 1-2" of water above grans until it's done... I use a half-gallon measuring cup. It works rather well, taking my efficiency from about 73% to 82% or so.
10. Once all wort is collected, I start my boil and do all hop additions (you can look this part up, if you're confuse :cross
11. With 15 minutes left in the boil, I put my immersion chiller/recirc tube into my boil kettle and start the pump to sanitize.
12. Once boil is over, I keep the pump flowing, turn on tap to chiller, and chill until the wort reaches about 100F... then I use my pre-chiller (a 25' copper immersion chiller) by submersing it in ice.
13. Once wort is about 75F (summer), I'll remove the immersion chiller and cover my wort with the BK lid, allowing sediment to settle out while I clean s*it up.
14. After s*it is clean, I transfer my wort to the fermenter, shaking the hell out of the hose during the process to aerate... believe me, this works just fine!.
15. I then place the fermenter (with airlock) in my temp regulated chamber and let it sit for about 2 hours until it reaches pitching temp.
16. Decant beer off of yeast starter (I usually put this in the fermentation chamber when I start my brew day), stir up yeast, and pitch into wort.
17. Clean everything else up while drinking a homemade beer!

Typically, I let my beers ferment at least a week before testing SG; usually, I just wait 2 weeks then rack to a keg and carb using the "set it and forget it" method... 15 PSI for 5-7 days, then lower to 10 PSI for serving. I'll then pull about a half-pint and toss it, just to get rid of the leftover yeast that settled out, then I'll pull another half-pint to taste. The beer usually isn't fully bright for 2 weeks after kegging.

Hope that helps. Cheers!!!

 

[Brulosopher]

I'm still interested in what others do

 

[MisterTipsy]

Extract brewer

1. measure ingredients
2. crush grain
3. steep grain

4. set up brew kettle, plate chiller, fermenter and tubing outside on the deck and stairs
5. dump starsan in BK and drain starsan through plate chiller and fermenter. Remove excess starsan.
6. bring water to a boil and then add steeped grain tea and mix in the LME.

7. achieve a steady boil with the wort and then the 60 minute boil clock begins.
8. add hops and other ingredients
9. boil ends
10. drain wort through plate chiller into the fermenter which takes about 7 minutes.

11. take fermenter inside and check the temp and OG. Chill wort if needed. The plate chiller gets the wort down to 60-70 depending on the season, so I don't have to refrigerate the wort too long or often.

12. fill brew kettle with oxyclean water. Scrub kettle and drain system. Rinse. Starsan.

13. pitch yeast. I use dry yeast 50% of the time. I use two liquid yeasts because I'm too lazy to make a starter.
14. ferment in a bucket for 2-3 weeks. I secondary only when really needed (1 week to a few months). bottle for 3 weeks.
15. Drink!

 

[dfc]

I recently moved to AG, but still plan on doing some extract from time to time. You've got to remember your roots.

I work a few different shifts (10a-7p and 5-6:30p-3a) so usually on brew days I sleep in.

1. Starting around 2-4pm I get roughly 4 gallons of filtered water from my fridge (after 1/2 gal this becomes about 90° in the summer).
2. Start heating strike water
3. Set up the rest of my gear (MLT, brewing table, buckets, etc.)
4. Get strike water to appropriate temp and pour proper amount into MLT.
5. Let sit 5 mins and check temp. If temp is too high stir until temp is correct.
6. Add grains while stirring.
7. Check temp. If close let grains and water sit for 5 mins. Check temp again. If still good let sit 1 hour.
8. Begin heating sparge water to 180°F.
9. Vorlauf and drain first runnings into Ale pail to check volume.
10. Add sparge water and stir well.
11. Vorlauf and sparge to make up the rest of the pre boil volume. I prefer to do a double sparge, but if I'm dealing w/ stuck sparge (AHS crushes my grains) I'll single sparge.
12. Once I get 6.5 gallons I begin my boil.
13. Add wort chiller and Irish Moss w/ 15 mins to go in boil.
14. Once boil is over I chill to about 100° and add 20lb. bag of ice to a rubber tub filled w/ water. Drop in sump pump and connect to wort chiller and proceed to cool to around 62°F.
15. Put sanitized 5 gal nylon paint strainer bag into sanitized bottling bucket and transfer wort to bucket.
16. Pull paint strainer bag out and squeeze excess wort from bag.
17. Aerate by opening spigot from bottling bucket which is sitting on 3.5 ft counter and draining into sanitized ale pail sitting on floor.
18. Once bottling bucket is empty add yeast and stir with sanitized mash paddle.
19. Add sanitized blow off tube and place in temp controlled (62°F) freezer.

 

[ktblunden]

AG brewer with a 10 gal alum brew pot, 10 gal round cooler with a braid, and a 7 gal alum turkey fryer pot I use as a hot liquor tank (no bulkhead yet so I end up pouring strike water and scooping out sparge water). I use a turkey fryer burner in the garage for the boil, but I generally mash in the kitchen using the stove for my HLT. I usually brew on a Saturday or Sunday whenever I happen to get up.

1. I use dry yeast more often than liquid, but when I happen to use liquid I'll get a starter going a couple days in advance.
2. First thing I do is heat 1 gallon of water to strike temp (usually only takes about 5-10 minutes on my stove) and dump that in my mash tun to let it pre-heat while I'm heating my strike water.
3. Heat strike water per Beersmith calculation.
4. Dump pre-heat water, fill MLT with strike water, dough in grains and check for target temp (now that I've started doing the pre-heat I usually nail temps right on).
5. During the mash I add sparge water to HLT and start heating, add mash out addition to a smaller pot to bring to boil (just started adding a mash out on my last batch and it raised my efficiency 7 points), measure out hop additions (if I haven't already, I usually do it a few days before), eat breakfast, etc.
6. Add boiling water to hit mash out temp, rest an additional 10 minutes. Vorlauf 2 quarts or so until it runs clear, and begin lautering. I tried batch sparging for a while, but it brought my efficiency down a lot, so I just continuously sparge with a quart sized measuring cup poured over a tupperware lid on the surface of the water in the MLT, keeping 1 to 2 inches of water above the grain bed.
7. Once I hit my volume I give the brew pot a good stir and take a gravity sample which I toss in the freezer to bring down to temp.
8. Take the brewpot out to the garage to the burner and get the flame started. Dump the spent grains and wash the MLT. Check the gravity of my sample which is now under 80° and enter preboil gravity into Beersmith. At this point I usually mix up some StarSan in my fermenter and get my wine thief, autosiphon, tubing, and air lock in there.
9. Now I relax with my laptop in the garage until I start boiling and then add the hops as required. At 15 minutes left my wort chiller goes in the pot.
10. After flameout I bring the brew pot inside and hook the wort chiller up to the bathroom faucet and start chilling. At this point I make sure all my cold side gear is sanitized and ready to go.
11. After temp is at or below 80° I take an OG sample and siphon into my fermenter, hit the wort with some oxygen and pitch the yeast.
12. I get the fermenter in the temp controlled fridge in the garage and tape the probe to the side of my bucket and set the target temp.
13. Clean everything.

 

[Misplaced_Canuck]

3 days ahead:

• Prepare yeast starter

The night before:

• Weigh & crush grains
• Weigh hops
• Set-up equipment on the back deck
• Fill HLT with water
• Fill bucket with extra water (for sparge)
• Sanitize the carboys, put a piece of cling wrap + rubber band on them

Day of brew:

• First thing, fire up the HLT
• Make coffee, have breakfast
• Mash in
• Sparge, boil, cool, pitch, grab a homebrew, clean.

MC

 

[bizarrojosh]

This is fun.

Extract Brewer.


3 days (maybe a week) before brew day
Make a yeast starter.

1 day before brew day.
Put 4 gallons of filtered water in fridge to chill over night.
Buy DME/LME, Hops, Steeping Grains, anything else that I need for brew day.

Brew day.

Bring 1 gallon to 165F and steep grains for 30-45 minutes.

During this time make a star san sanitizing solution and leave in carboy. Get ingredients ready. Drink coffee.

Remove steeping grains and place in small bowl for later.

Turn burner on high and dissolve DME or LME and wait for it to come to boil.

Get past boil over without any spills

Add hops, gypsum powder, etc. and let boil for an hour (this may change depending on recipe and hop additions)

run some cool water over grain bag and extract more sugars and then add the extracted sugars back into brew kettle.

While waiting for 60 min to be up I sanitize bubble lock and cap for carboy. Screw around until boil has completed.

After 60 min I move kettle to ice bath.

I dump star san out of carboy and then begin pouring 2 gallons of chilled, well shaken bottles of water into carboy.

I add the slightly chilled hot wort to chilled water.

Then I add the rest of the chilled water.

If the carboy is warm to the touch at this point I check the temp to make sure it's less than 75F to pitch yeast, if it is cool or room temp I pitch yeast without a temp check.

Put cap and bubble lock on and wait for bottling day!

 

[jrodskreet]

I brew strictly extract. I have a primary, secondary and bottling cycle i adhere to.

3 days ahead:
Boil water, let cool, then freeze to cool wort.

2 days ahead:
Sanitize bottles

The night before:
sanitize bottling wand, bottling bucket,and hoses
prep bottles and sanitize caps.
Whatever is in my secondary I bottle
Then I clean and sanitize my secondary (carboy)

Day of brew:

Wake up when my son gets me up usually 0530.
make coffee and feed us.
heat water for steeping
steep grains usually 30 minutes
while steeping i transfer whatever is in primary to secondary.
60 minute hops
While boiling I clean and sanitize my primary bucket and clean transfer equipment
Also i boil some water for mixing dry yeast
whatever other hop additions
at 20 minutes i boil extract.
mix dry yeast to cooled water
cool wort with my ice I made.
add yeast, move to primary, top off with water, and get OG
clean everything.
eat lunch.

2 weeks later:

wash, rinse, repeat.

 

[CKing]

All grain: 5 gallon mash tun w/ fly sparge manifold connected to 5 gallon hot liquor tank, 10.5 gallon stainless brew kettle, propane burner. I mash, sparge, ferment, clean and store everything in my basement. Boil outside or in the garage.

Develop recipe via Beersmith.
A day or two before I get my ingredients from Grape and Granary, they crush the grains for me.
Clean and set up my equipment the night before (this easily saves me an hour on brew day).

Heat strike water (based on 60 degrees for equipment, grains, etc.)
Add strike water and grains in layers stirring as I go.
Once the mash starts I heat my sparge water, clean and sanitize the rest of my equipment, hang out.
Vorlauf (2-3 quarts)
Fly sparge for approximately 45 minutes.
Collect wort in brew kettle, take outside to boil.

Sanitize immersion chiller last 10 minutes of boil.
Hook up to utility sink in basement and chill, takes about 30 minutes.
Pour into primary, splashing for aeration, pitch yeast, lid and airlock or blow off tube.

Ferment 2-3 weeks, transfer to better bottle for secondary for 2 weeks, bottle

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

Single-tier system, 10.5 gal batches. 13.3gal HLT, 15.5gal MT, 20 gal boil kettle. 2 March 809 pumps, Chillus Convolutus, and a Sanke keg fermenter.

1) Pull out my mash tun and burner. Measure strike water (generally 1.5 qt per pound of grain), put into mash tun, and start burner (it's a keggle, so I direct fire the mash). Cut a campden tablet in half, grind half up with mortar & pestle, put it into strike water to reduce chloramine. If style appropriate, add gypsum to mash.
2) Measure out my grains, mill them.
3) Get the keggle HLT and burner out. Fill keggle HLT to the brim and light it up. Grind other half of campden tablet, pour in.
4) When my strike water reaches temp, add grain and stir vigorously.
5) Stir grain again 20 minutes into mash, and 40 minutes into mash.
6) 10-15 minutes from the end of the mash, use a pump to start recirculating the mash. Process doubles as an extended vorlauf. At this point I lightly start adding heat to slowly bring up the temp of the mash.
7) Reach the end of the mash, start pumping the wort into the BK while using second pump to push sparge water through my sparge ring (see it in action here: http://www.youtube.com/backhousebrew#p/u/3/T0vK0o7R9iw )
8) When I get 1-2 gallons into the BK, start applying heat to the BK.
9) When the BK gets about half full, start using a depth gauge to determine how close I am to my target preboil volume. Fill until I get to just over 13 gal.
10) Take pre-boil gravity reading with refractometer. Start boil (90 minute boil). Add boil hops / etc as required by recipe.
11) While boil is progressing start cleaning my fermenter (15.5 gal Sanke). This includes hot water & PBW and a power drill with a brush attachment simlar to a lees stirrer. Then a rinse. Finally (as approaching end of boil) add 2-3 gallons of water to the fermenter, put it on burner, and steam-sanitize it.
12) Also while boil is progressing, clean mash tun.
13) 10 minutes prior to end of boil, start recirculating the hot wort through the Chillus Convolutus & pump to sanitize them. Depending style, add whirlfloc table to the boil.
14) At flameout, continue recirculating the wort back into the boil kettle. Turn on hose water through outer section of Chillus Convolutus.
15) Continue recirculating wort until boil kettle thermometer reads <120 deg F (sometimes lower).
16) Start filling fermenter from pump. In cool months, use hose water in the Chillus Convolutus to chill the wort going into the fermenter. In warm months (or for any lager), recirculate ice water through the Chillus instead.
17) Insert fermenter kit (http://www.brewershardware.com/American-Sanke-Keg-Fermenter-Kit-with-Thermowell.html) into sanke, put in fermentation fridge, set temp controller to proper setting for style.
18) Clean up and put everything away.
19) If wort temp is within proper range, pitch yeast. Otherwise wait until fridge brings it in range to pitch.

There ya go... I left off the "starter" step for yeast because I typically use dry, but if I'm using a liquid strain, obviously I'm making a starter about 3 days prior to brewing.

 

[befus]

All grain semi-BIAB.


1. Begin yeast starter on stirplate 36 hours before hand.
2. Start heating strike water and add 1/4 camden tab; my water sucks.
3. Run grains through the Corona.
4. Get strike water to appropriate temp and pour proper amount into the pre-heated Gatorade cooler in which I have my BIAB bag.
5. Check strike water temp.
6. Add grains while stirring.
7. Check temp. If close let grains and water sit for 5 mins. Check temp again. If still good let sit 1 hour.
8. Begin heating sparge water to Beersmith recommended temp.
9.. Stir a bit more and lift bag out of cooler, allow to drain a bit and then put the bag into the 9.5 gallon brew kettle in which I heated the sparge water and stir well.
10. Check temp and adjust if necessary and stir again.
11. After 13 minutes I stir constantly for the last two minutes of the sparge.
12. Remove bag to cooler lid, add first runnings to kettle and rinse bagged grains in the cooler with about another gallon of water and squeeze/press like hell, add to kettle, then measure volume to check efficiency with hydrometer reading.
13. Add wort chiller and Irish Moss w/ 15 min. to go in boil.
14. Begin immersion chiller routine.
15. When wort is as low as it is going (depends on season) open valve on kettle and let wort fall into fermentation bucket on the floor for aeration.
16. Check volume and top off with bottled and chilled water to correct volume (if necessary).
17. Take bucket to swamp cooler to further reduce temp.
18. Take OG hydrometer drawing.
19. Pitch starter and cross fingers .
20. Look around, sigh, and begin clean-up.

 

[remuS]

All-grain, batch sparge

1. Crush grains (night before brewday).
2. Wake up and start heating strike water
3. Preheat mashtun
4. Add water / grain to mash tun once water is heated
5. Make coffee, measure hops, and start heating sparge water (40 minutes into mash).
6. Do small mashout, drain as fast as I can.
7. Add sparge water, stir, drain as fast as I can.
8. Start boil and cleanup of mashtun
9. End of boil - Start chilling beer and sanitizing carboys
10. Siphon wort into carboys add yeast.
11. Finish cleanup of kettle, spoons, etc.

Last week I had my brew day start and finish in 4 hours 15 minutes.

Winter it takes me about 6 hours because I'm stuck inside during the mash, cleanup, and the longer time it takes to get to a boil.

 

[S0meB0dy]

Night Before

Crush grains
Measure hop additions

Brewday

Fill HLT and heat to strike temp
Mix mash well to break up doughballs
Start mash recirculation
Drink some beer
Smoke a cigar
Heat water to 170F and begin batch sparge
Drain wort into kettle and bring to a boil
Drink some beer
Dump spent grains into compost pile
Turn compost pile
Clean MLT and HLT while boil is in progress
Drink some beer
Add hops per recipe
Turn on wort chiller after boil is complete
Drink some beer
Transfer wort to fermenter and pitch yeast
Clean kettle and put brew supplies away
Drink more beer

 

[Horseballs]

2 days or so before hand I make a starter, generally from a mason jar full of rinsed yeast
On brewday I measure out my strike water for single infusion batch sparge and start heating it on my stove (apartment brewing...)
While the strike is heating up I mill my grains BY HAND in my corona style mill
I add my strike water to my cooler mash tun at about 5 degrees higher than the target temp to preheat the tun and finish milling (ow, my shoulder)
I dough in and start the mash
Thirty minutes out I start heating my strike water in three vessels as I have no HLT proper: My mash out water goes into my boil kettle, and the remaining sparge water is split between a 12 qt pot and a 6 qt pot
I mash-out, vorlauf and collect my first runnings into my boil kettle and then sparge.
I collect my second runnings and then nearly spill hot wort everywhere as I lift 7-8 gallons onto my stove, swearing that I'll get a proper gravity fed system "someday"
start my boil by putting two of my burners on high (gas stove)
boil
clean out my mash tun while boiling scooping grains into my garbage can and lugging the thing down three flights of stairs to the dumpster
heave and ho and get the pot off the stove and next to the sink where I chill with my wort chiller. After I get down to about 90 I connect my wort chiller to my bottling bucket, which is full of ice water, and get down to pitching temps
Pitch the yeast and put the bucket into a swamp cooler full of water collected from my wort chiller
Admire my pipeline (3 buckets, 4 carboys and lots of bottles)
Wish for a garage to brew in as well as a kegging system.

 

[HawksBrewer]

I usually toss some crushed grain in a cooler-type looking thing w/ some hot water and then boil it w/ some leaf-like cones for an hour. Toss in some yeast after it cools and drink it a few weeks later. Apparently the yeast are what help make you but this is conjecture as far as I'm concerned.

Seriously? I'm the first smarta$$ answer? Sorry, life is too short, and in the words of the Joker "WHY, SO, SERIOUS?"

 

[JonW]

When I started doing back-to-back batches, I created a timeline just to visualize where I could overlap my processes.
The chart below has me at 5 hours for a single batch and 7.75 for a double, but I now routinely go about 4.5 hours for a single and 6.5 to 7 hours for a double.